


Post-Show Checklist

by carotid



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Theatre, Arthur inner mind theatre, Arthur is kind of a drama queen on the inside, Arthur's life is hard, Humor, M/M, Masturbation, Romance, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Workplace Relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-07
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-04-08 03:00:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4288209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carotid/pseuds/carotid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alternate Title: Arthur Is A Fucking Professional<br/>Alternate Alternate Title: Arthur Is Fucking A Professional (In His Dreams)</p><p>Arthur wouldn't say that he's the best stage manager in the business. What Arthur is, however, is the best at what he does. And much of what he does is stage manage for Cobb. When they finally have the production opportunity that Cobb has been searching for, they manage to assemble a dynamic team... including their lead actor, Eames, who causes Arthur to find himself face to face with his one hard-and-fast rule for workplace professionalism: <i>Absolutely no showmance. EVER.</i></p><p>NOTE: This work is no longer being updated. It betrayed me, as AUs tend to do, and spun a bunch of plotlines that I want to put to other use. But I had nearly 3000 words of chapter 3, so I figured I'd finish up at least that much! I'll be locking this piece to registered users soon, and eventually removing it from AO3. Thank you to everyone who has read/responded!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prep

**Author's Note:**

> (Barely T-rated this chapter, starts going M in the next.)

"What's your availability December through January?"

"When in December?" Arthur asked, stepping to the inside of the sidewalk and wedging his iPhone between his ear and his shoulder so that he could dig his planner out of his bag.

"I don't know the exact date off the top of my head," Cobb said like he had the right to be exasperated with Arthur, "it's, it's near the top of the month, whatever the first week is. Maybe actually the last week of November."

"Need a date, Cobb," said Arthur, crossing the Prototype job off of December and flipping back to tomorrow's to-do list, making a note to e-mail Noah with his regrets and a recommendation for a replacement.

"Look, it's around the beginning of December, I'll get the producer to e-mail you the details-"

"Wait," he said, Sharpie fine-point nearly stabbing through the page. "You got an actual producer? The real kind, not a glorified errand boy slash accountant?"

"Yeah," Cobb breathed into the phone. "Yeah, I… And I have almost complete control over hiring my team."

"Almost?"

"Saito, he wants, that’s the producer, Saito, he wants to create a relationship with the Guggenheim, start collaborations with the contemporary art world. That's, that would be how he'd lay stake in new territory, where if you're not playing to the tourist crowd and the audiences aren't going to be as big-"

"-at least they'll have bigger pockets, or the cachet of those who do," Arthur finished for him, tucking his pen behind his ear so that he could grab his phone, wincing as he uncrunched his neck. "Use a position on the design team to bring in someone big as a crossover artist. He roping Miuccia Prada back to the stage or something?"

"Not a fashion designer. Video artist."

Arthur was not a praying man, so he just looked to the light-polluted Manhattan night sky and breathed out on a count of eight. 

(one) Of all the members of the design team to not be an actual theatre professional, this was possibly the most asininely unnecessary route to a guaranteed trainwreck (two) as Cobb would be pushing the design beyond what the technology could handle and some aspect of the production would come crashing down around their ears (three) and there would be angry screaming and probably somebody would start crying and there would be messy emotions all around (four) and Arthur would be the only one not having messy emotions and it would be another episode of him cleaning up in Cobb's wake and crashing on Cobb's couch for nights on end and his houseplants would die, (five) and god the only kind of producer that would back Cobb these days was probably either some art illuminati mobster or even an actual mobster who making some type of devil's bargain where they'd have to flee the country when it all fell apart and his houseplants would _die_ , (six) and he could see his mother's disappointment shadowed face in his dreams saying 'Arthur, what are you doing with yourself, this will never go anywhere' and not actually his mother's voice saying 'this is eating you alive, there will be nothing left' (seven) and the years would pass and her and not-her words would all come true and he would see his life flashing before his eyes in his final moments all alone in that same apartment and in the weeks it would take for anyone to find his decomposing body _his houseplants would die_. (eight)

"Yeah, well, all right" Arthur said. " _Attila_ was a mess, so glad it's not Prada. Look, you're at the Holland Festival right now, aren't you? Why don't you call me back when it isn't four in the morning in your time zone?"

"I'll have Saito send you the details," Cobb reiterated, "and I'll loop you in when design starts."

"Got it," said Arthur, not bothering to point out that he hadn't actually agreed to do the job because his actually granting his consent was something they'd apparently done away with years ago.

"Great. And Arthur… It's finally happening. This- it's her play. We're doing it. It's going to happen."

Arthur's second of stunned silence, a rare moment of being caught off guard, was enough for Cobb to consider the conversation over and hang up.

"And you know," said Arthur into his disconnected phone, "next time, you could start by saying 'hello.' I hear it's all the rage these days."

He slipped his planner back into his bag and tucked his phone into his jacket pocket. Descending to the M train platform, he had the distinct sensation of descending into Hell – even more so than going underground in New York City on a summer day usually induced. This was going to be a fucking nightmare, and he'd be damned if he didn't go running straight into it every time, eyes wide open. 

Well, what was life without a flair of the dramatic? And if he was already making plans to take advantage of being between gigs and go out on a bit of a bender on Saturday night because he knew that he deserved it in advance –- let it not be said that Arthur was a man who didn't know his own worth.

Arthur wouldn't say that he was the best stage manager in the business. While the performing arts was not the largest industry, its demands were wide-ranging enough that he believed that anyone who claimed to be the best overall was most likely a very strongly mediocre sort of person. What Arthur was, however, was the best at what he did. And what he did was support high-risk, non-traditional projects that were always on the knife's edge of collapsing and, in the event that disaster did occur, hold things together as much as possible and do damage control. 

What he also did was stage manage for Cobb. These things were not unrelated.

It's that history that made him thoroughly unsurprised when he was in the Union Square Starbucks some weeks later with a girl who looked like she was about sixteen years old -– which would be to say, not deep enough in the business yet to have heard all of the stories -– but was apparently their scenic designer.

"Scenic and costumes," she said, meeting his gaze straight on while her hand sketched something in the notebook sitting on top of the printed script in her lap as if it were an entity operating independently of the rest of her.

"Scenic and costumes" he echoed neutrally, neither impressed nor sarcastic. It would be up to her to prove to him which he should be. "Straight outta Yale, yeah?"

"Yeah, I just graduated this spring and, you know, moved to the city, and then I got a call-" She paused, nose crinkling slightly in the place of a laugh, something that might have been a giggle from a person made of lighter stuff than she apparently was, and took a sip of her coffee. (Grande, French Roast, black.) "Which is kind of funny, you know? Like, who calls anymore? But it was nice, actually. Um, so I got the call from Mr. Cobb, who said that Ming had recommended me for this project he was doing, which is still kind of unbelievable to me, since I think I got, like, two handshakes of approval my entire three years there-"

"But that's still more than anyone else got."

"Well... yeah, I guess." She paused again and gave him a curious look. "Were you YSD, too?"

Arthur shook his head. "Not me. But sometimes I feel like I might as well have been, with all I've heard about it from Cobb."

"Right, of course, the directors take the design class their second year."

"Yeah. You know he wasn't a director then, though, right? He was there for design. Lighting. Oh-" He pointed to the computer screen. "Finally connected. Cobb, you there? I'm here with Ariadne."

"The internet in this hotel is bullshit," said Cobb's tinny voice from inside Arthur's Macbook Air.

"Then let's stay on topic and get this meeting over as quickly as possible. Remember, everyone, this is just a chance to get on the same page artistically. No pressure to actually plan things out right now, and I'm not actually the production manager so there's not anyone here to give you money to do anything anyways. Cobb?"

Arthur had heard about the play before -- many times before -- so when Cobb started talking, he turned his attention instead to the tiny designer sitting next to him, watching her reactions over the rim of his espresso macchiato. She was the only other member of the team currently in the city, so everyone else was skyping in. Their high-profile Artist-with-a-capital-A had been supposed to join them, but he'd flaked at the last minute. Said something vague about a family issue, which Arthur intellectually knew was an understandable thing that happened to people who didn't throw over their families for work on the regular (or so he'd heard), but he was also self-aware enough to watch his own first impression of their celebrity guest tilt toward the negative, like a slow lean on a WiiFit balance board (he had a high score of 135 for the penguin slide, thank you very much). This designer, though, he was thinking that he might like her. She was taking notes in one of those compostable composition books, eyes alight with interest, perhaps just a little too widely, a little too fresh out of grad school. But the way she was biting her lip, sometimes writing out of synch with how Cobb was talking -- she was soaking it all up like a sponge, yeah, but not letting what Cobb said be the end of the story.

Good.

"So, hold on a sec," she said. "I'm not really clear from the script, is this actually a one-man show or...?"

"Almost," said Cobb. "One actor. I'm thinking four dancers, depending on who we can get, what they're capable of. But the focus is on the one person, and how we get him refracted into a multiplicity, which will be where a lot of the projections come in, both pre-recorded and livefeed."

"How close are you on casting? Not to be too pushy on it, I know it's a while away and things can take time to finalize, but it's sounding like not only am I dressing him, but he's basically dressing the set. So as soon as I'm able to start getting a sense of him..."

"It's not official yet, but I know who I want and we don't anticipate there being any issues getting him. We can have a breakout about that later."

"Can't wait," she said, scribbling something in her notebook that, to the best of Arthur's peripheral vision's ability to make out, appeared to be a geometrically abstracted dick with dollar signs shooting out of it.

Yeah, Arthur liked her.

Packing up his laptop after the meeting, he could feel Ariadne watching him.

"You two have worked together for a while?" she said, the tiniest lilt of question to her statement. "It's just, these types of meetings, you don't usually have..."

"Yeah, it's kind of a package deal at this point." He closed his bag.

"I mean, no offense. I like stage managers."

"'Some of your best friends are stage managers'?" he said wryly.

"No," she laughed, caught but unflustered. "I mean- not like that!"

"Cobb would do well with a small company, the way that he operates," he said, relenting with a small smile. "For now, he's just got me, though."

"I mean, I can just picture it. The sort of project this is, things like this, it would be amazing to have a group that you could just develop these works with. I mean, I just... This production is... I am so excited about this. This is so... viscerally interesting." She looked down at her notebook. "I have no idea what it's going to be, and I have to find out."

"Yeah," said Arthur. "I know the feeling."

"Do you know where we're rehearsing? I'll send you some PDFs of the prelim ground plans as soon as I have them, probably next month. Hopefully a props list within a couple weeks, I'll need to talk with Cobb about it, but I'm really starting to see this."

"No on the rehearsal space, but if you throw in both dimensioned and clean versions of the ground plan, you might succeed in bribing me into loving you."

"Well, if that's all it takes…" She grinned. "Don't wait up for me, I'm probably going to be working here for a while."

"Have fun. Don't forget that you're not actually on a grad school schedule anymore, take some breaks while you still can."

Arthur headed out, sunglasses his only sartorial concession to the summer sun, despite opening the door to back to the world feeling like opening to the door to an oven. The number of entities to whom Arthur conceded anything was very small, and some ball of gas in the sky that never got any closer than 91 million miles away was not high up on his list. It wasn't like they ever saw each other that much, anyways.

Nevertheless, it was a relief to finally slide into a seat on the air conditioned subway car. He dug his planner out of his bag and began jotting down his to-do list for when he got back to his apartment:  
-write up meeting notes  
-send notes to group  
-buy ticket to show Yusuf mentioned mixing at LPR next month  
-ask Cobb about actor  
-Facebook/imdb/ibdb/google-stalk said actor 

It was professionally important to be thorough, of course. Especially since, other than him, it was an entirely new team. He'd already done similar research on all of the designers, with Ariadne having been the biggest question mark, her age and relative lack of experience leaving less for him to track down. The lighting designer, for example, was an old friend of the Cobbs whose name Arthur remembered from the before time, some Yale mafia alum too old to have much on social media but with a resume that sported a couple of large Broadway productions, both Tony nominated, but was mostly academic work, which actually reassured Arthur that he'd be able to deal with Cobb's shit. It was a career with the structure of someone who taught because he wanted to, not because it was a job to grow bitter in when other accolades failed to pour in. The sound designer Yusuf was more difficult to read, despite him appearing to be only slightly older than Arthur. The two of them shared a shocking zero Facebook friends, and at this point, Arthur probably had an average of twenty mutuals with any given theatre person active in New York. From what he was able to dig up about the guy, however, he seemed to be more involved in the music scene. (He added "ask Cobb how he found sound" to his to-do list.) He was reasonably sure that he'd found his Soundcloud, and if he was right, the guy did some sick remix work. During the skype meeting, he'd been pretty quiet; Arthur had a gut feeling that watching him at the show next month would be both instructive and reassuring.

And then there was their mysterious projections designer, one Robert Fischer. His website and the dozens of articles and art show reviews that Arthur had been able to dig up had all liberally shown off Fischer's work. If the man had any collaborative experience whatsoever, though, Arthur hadn't turned up any evidence of it. He liked the art plenty, and he knew that the opportunity to have Mal's play produced in New York wouldn't have been enough alone to reel Cobb in if he hadn't been artistically excited by the one rule given to him, not after what had happened before. But if he couldn't play well with others…

The train slowed at his stop. His phone was already out as he exited the car, speed-dial sending its call up to outer space as he emerged from the Central Ave station.

"What do you think?" said Cobb.

"Ariadne was a good find, don't screw it up," said Arthur. "Also, hello. So who's this actor?"

"Eames."

"Eames?" Arthur frowned as he let himself into his apartment. "Didn't you do that soldier piece in Edinburgh with him? 2013?"

"Yes. He's good."

"I know that, but-"

"And he's what we need," Cobb finished for him. "Saito has already had his people reach out to him. We don't have signatures on paper yet, but I'm meeting with him next week and I think we've got this. Still working on the dancers, it's a little more up in the air what I want from them."

"Wait, our people have people now?" Arthur's frown intensified. People could be useful or people could just get in the way. He dropped off his bag and headed to the kitchen to get a glass of water for his houseplants.

"Trust me, Arthur." Arthur resisted the reflexive urge to throw the glass of water against the wall that those words induced. "We've finally got the means to make this happen."

"Yeah. So, how did you find this Yusuf guy?"

As Cobb explained, Arthur tossed some leftovers onto a plate and stuck it in the microwave, then got his computer out onto his desk. A quick search of Eames pulled up mostly performance art-type work rather than straight theatre. They'd never worked together before and Arthur was pretty sure that he'd never seen him in anything, but he did look vaguely familiar. Cobb had probably sent him stills from the Edinburgh production, he figured. He hadn't been able to do that one because it had happened to have coincided with an urgent need to actually make some money, but he remembered hearing good things about that show from Cobb and horror stories from the crew he'd interrogated (and sworn to secrecy) afterwards.

It wasn't until November, when Arthur was importing his show contacts from gmail into his phone, and he saw that Eames's number from gmail was duplicated with the number on his phone under the name "Hot British Guy w Mouth" with the note "june pre-cobb hate myself", that Arthur actually figured out why Eames had looked familiar.

"Oh fuck me," said Arthur.

It was a curse of mild annoyance and certainly not an invitation, he mentally clarified to the universe. One round of mutually drunken semi-public sex was not something he was about to get too hung up over. After all, he was a professional. 

He dialed the number and looked over his first-day-of-rehearsal spiel as he waited for Eames to pick up. Hi I'm Arthur your stage manager, first day next Tuesday the eighteenth, rehearsal in the black box at 440 Studios on Lafayette…

"Hello?" said a very sexy British voice on the other end of the line.

'Oh _fuck me_ ,' thought Arthur.


	2. Designs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there was that time that I realized that I'd screwed myself over by needing an actual play and design to include in the story but was determined that the play be written by a character in-universe and not be something conveniently pre-existing. I hate myself. And I beg the forgiveness of any actual directors/designers reading this. (Also, as the total chapter count indicates, this thing also... _grew_.) But hopefully it won't take as long to bang out future chapters!

It was tempting to undo the top button of his shirt or even forgo his vest as Arthur felt the skin under his collar growing damp with sweat, the air uncomfortably hot despite it just being the two of them and Eames looking irritatingly unaffected and casual, having shed both his coat and zip-up cardigan almost immediately, exposing the way his dark plummy-colored oxford shirt just barely escaped being too tight around the chest and shoulders. Arthur shot a glance toward the closed door. 

"So between you and me," said Arthur as he leaned toward Eames, "one of us has to be the deputy. Or it could be Morgan, but it feels unfair to elect her in absentia." He checked his phone, which sat on top of his production book on the table in front of him. "Sorry for the delay, I have no idea where the Equity guy is. But we can at least have our decisions done by the time he decides to show up."

"It all seems rather silly," Eames said, leaning back in his chair, "given that there's only three of us. Just give it to Morgan."

"I usually consider it best for it not to be a member of the stage management team."

"But it also doesn't make any sense for it to be me." Eames jabbed a finger in the air, as if locating his figurative point. "Because then, what? If I feel something's amiss, I bring up a complaint with myself?"

"No, if you felt that an issue hadn't been adequately resolved after bringing it to us, you'd have all of the information needed to take it to our Equity liaison-" The door opened, and Arthur's assistant came back in. "Any luck with the temperature in here?"

Morgan shook her head. "They're working on it, they said. The heat's just running high because, you know, fall."

"Morgan!" Eames twisted in his seat to beam at her. "We'd like to crown you the union deputy. "

"He'd like to crown you the union deputy. Also, this is an election, not a coronation, we're in America."

"Are you saying I shouldn't be crowned?" Morgan accused Arthur with mock indignation.

Arthur held up a hand as a white flag and began filling out the deputy form with the other. "By majority vote, Morgan is deputy. If at any point there is concern about the workplace that hasn't been satisfactorily resolved, et cetera, Morgan will be your point person for contacting the union. Everybody sign."

He gave the door another irritated look. Sure, city time was city time, you were either ten minutes early or ten minutes late for everything because of the vagaries of the commute, but Arthur had particularly little patience for tardiness from people who should know better, who knew full well the sort of time tables that they were all trying to keep to. At least they had a full hour scheduled for Equity business that shouldn't take more than half that, but the tone that it set for the start of the process-

What sounded suspiciously like a feminine giggle caught him by surprise, and he turned his attention back to the table to see what he feared was the hint of a blush on Morgan's face.

Despite her looking like she could have played a flight attendant in Catch Me If You Can, Morgan was far from the giggly type. Arthur had worked with her a few times before, and what she lacked in technical background, she more than made up for in being a quick study and as solid and unflappable as a first-responder. (Though given the Cirque internship on her resume, Arthur had considered, it was probably more the unflappability _of_ a first-responder.) On top of it all, Arthur was, like, ninety percent sure that she was a lesbian. All of which was to say that Arthur was really curious, and perhaps a bit irrationally annoyed, about whatever was happening here.

"Mr. Eames, what are you doing to my ASM?" he asked dryly. 

"Absolutely nothing," Eames replied, his equally dry tone coupled with an expression of tragic regret.

"...right," Arthur said, eyes darting back and forth between the two of them. "So, hour lunch break and straight-six votes..."

In the end, they approved both options, Eames filled out the emergency medical information form that Arthur always did, the Equity representative showed up a half-hour late, there weren't any more mysterious giggling incidents, and Arthur still had no idea if Eames recognized him and almost had himself convinced that that was an unequivocal relief. He put them on a break while they waited for the others to show up for design presentations and the first read-through, and went to get himself a cup of coffee from the hospitality table.

"So. Arthur." 

He turned to see Eames leaning one hip against the table, arms crossed over his broad chest. "Yes, Mr. Eames?" 

"First of all, we can drop the 'mister,' yes? Unless that's just your thing, I mean, far be it from me..."

"Consider all honorific titles to be gone."

"And the class system is demolished in one fell swoop, lovely." Eames grabbed a mug (the dog one, to be specific), filled it from the electric kettle, and started rifling through the basket of tea bags. "Anyways, I must let you know that it was rather a delight to find out that we'd be working together."

"Is that so," said Arthur.

"Truly. Your reputation precedes you." He tore open a packet of earl grey and dunked the tea bag into his cup. "I don't think a day went by in Edinburgh when Cobb didn't invoke your name."

An odd, light feeling lodged itself somewhere around his third chakra. "Only terrible invocations, I hope."

"The worst. We were halfway convinced that you were actually a figment of his imagination, some sort of, ah, spirit he had invented in an attempt to bring the fantasy of order to an insane universe. But to find you fully flesh and blood, well."

"I heard the show went good," Arthur said.

"That's very kind of you to say. At any rate. Always nice to put a name to a face, you know. Can't wait to get started."

And with a sardonic little nod, Eames ambled back to the table, setting down his tea but not sitting yet, just drumming his fingers on the cover of his script. Arthur realized he was still holding an empty mug (the "Yale Mom" one, to be specific), so he poured himself his coffee just in time for Cobb to come strolling in, deep in conversation with a tall Japanese man. Taking an educated guess that that was the mysterious Saito, he quickly dumped in a splash of creamer, left his coffee by his seat as he passed it without stopping, and went into greeter mode.

Unlike their deputy, toward whom Arthur was still harboring a grudge, everyone was on time for the design presentation. Save, of course, for Robert Fischer, who'd had a schedule conflict and wasn't going to be there at all. Arthur couldn't even bring himself to harbor grudges over the enormous sea of doubt and indigestion that was Robert Fischer to him by this point. But the rest of the group was welcomed and started on setting up their presentation materials without fuss, with Arthur discreetly scribbling important personal notes into the margin of today's page in his log book (Yusuf - liberal creamer and sugar; Ariadne - black again; Nash - splenda; Miles - dash of milk; Saito - brought his own, really fancy travel mug). When activities had had a few minutes to transition from set-up to mingling, he checked the time, gave Morgan a nod to close the door, and then caught Cobb's eye. Cobb raised an eyebrow, then returned a tiny nod, so Arthur cleared his throat and called, "Hey, everyone, we're about to get started."

"Welcome, everyone," said Cobb as the group settled into their seats. "I'm so glad and grateful to have this amazing team assembled here. Introductions are a little bit redundant at this point, most of us have been meeting already, but in the interest of thoroughness, let's have a go-around. I'm Dominic Cobb, I'm the director." He turned to his left.

"Saito, producer."

"Miles, lighting designer."

"Yusuf, sound and music."

"Nash, props."

"Ariadne, scenic and costumes."

"Eames, I'm an actor or something."

"Morgan, assistant stage manager."

"Arthur, stage manager. And one member of our team can't be with us today, Robert Fischer is our projections designer."

"Great," said Cobb, which wasn't what Arthur would have said as a follow-up to that, but hey, this wasn't his speech time. "Again, I wanna emphasize that what we're doing today is an introduction. What we have right now is a starting place. But it's important that the conversation continues, that we're always able to be reactive. That's what makes a live art like theatre different from anything else. And that's what's at the heart of this specific piece."

He stood up and started his habitual pacing back and forth behind his chair.

"All of us here know the story of Icarus. In fact, it's probably one of the more well-known myths in general. But let me tell it again. Escaping from the king holding him captive on an island, an inventor created wings held together by wax so that he and his son could literally fly away. He cautioned his son not to fly too close to the sun or too close to the water. But overcome by joy in the air, the boy flew higher and higher, until the heat from the sun melted the wings' wax, causing the wings to fall apart, and he plunged to his death in the sea.

"The idea, the metaphor of flying too close to the sun has traction in most people's minds, even if they couldn't name Icarus or Daedalus. The image is just that widespread. But there's another famous image of that famous image: the Bruegel painting, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. It's the one of a sunny summer day by the seaside, with a farmer plowing his field, sheep grazing on the hillside, ships coming and going with their trade. But down in a corner, barely noticeable, is a pair of legs emerging from the water. Or, rather, a body disappearing into the water. But who notices? Who has reason to? None of the others in the painting has reason to. Why should we?

"A moment later, there wouldn't be anything left to notice. But that very last instant, at the end of the fall, that... that, it, um, that is... Bruegel chose that moment, and it resonates so strongly, for a reason. That is our final opportunity. Our final warning. Before all is lost.

"You hear people today bemoaning about how much people don't notice things anymore. About how everyone is all caught up in their smartphones and devices and how we lack interaction. But there's this word: sonder. It refers to, in short, 'the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.' And the thing is? That word, it's a made-up word. Not even three years old at this point. But some guy, in our supposedly shut-off world, knew the meaning and made up a word to name it. 

"Do the people in the painting experience that? Who can say? But in our wondering that about the people in the painting, we have access to that feeling. The same as people who first saw that painting nearly five-hundred years ago. Across time and space, we're all connected by that one moment. We can all go there, if we want to.

"The reason that I started with the story, even though we all know it? Is because that's where we need to start. Not literally with those words, but we need to start with the story. That's the only way to plant an idea into someone's brain. When we hear words, our brains' language processors decode the meanings. Shapes, visual processing. Numbers, mathematical processing. But when we hear a story, we also engage whatever areas of the brain that we would use when experiencing the events of that story. The minds of the teller and the listening become synchronized.

"So: we have a story to tell. That, above all other things. But when we tell that story, if we do it successfully, if we make that connection with the minds of those receiving the story, we're giving more than a series of events, more than a plot outline, more than even a character. Everything that is packed into this piece, that interrogation into what it means to be present in the lives of others, that all goes with it."

Cobb paused behind his chair and leaned his hands on the table, looking around the group.

"How is it that we're present?" he asked. "Who is present with us? Who is not here but still with us? We need to ask this of each other and of ourselves." He let a pause hang in the air for a moment before looking to his left. "Ariadne?"

"Thanks. So. Like Cobb said, we want to reinforce the question of how we're present with others, taking advantage of what's unique to live theatre and also not falling back on technophobic, Millennials-ruin-everything talking points. We're a small enough group, so, I've got the model set up over here, we can all come take a look…"

During the inevitable awkward pause of chairs being pushed back from the table and people re-arranging themselves around a half-inch scale model of the set, Arthur reached across Cobb's script to pick up a stray pencil, discreetly leaning himself close.

"You okay?" he asked quietly.

"I'm fine." Same response he always got, same clipped tone that put an end to the conversation there.

"So, you see," Ariadne began, as Arthur trailed behind Cobb to catch up with the group, "it's an open set, the audience is in the playing space. It's a cafeteria-type layout, with the long tables, not because we want to take everyone back to high school, but we do want that communal feel. Seated audience capacity is sixty-four, with additional standing room. We're not disguising the fact that we're all physically in this room together, that's our setting, but we are building onto it. All of this structure here," she said, running a finger around the inside of the model, "that's all us."

Eames raised his hand. "Um, can I ask, is all of that-"

"That's all usable," Ariadne said with a grin. "Hittable, climbable. And just let me know if there's anything else we think we might need to do with it. It also gives us a lot of usable surface area. Which come into play largely with these little things here."

She pointed to something on the set. From near the back of the group, Arthur could barely see, especially with Eames all but sticking his head inside of the model.

"These are all webcams. Robert'll be using a lot of traditional cameras as well, of course, but he wanted as much individualized coverage as possible, too, and this works both practically, cost-wise, and artistically, with them being more unobtrusive, everyday items than if we had a video camera aimed at each person's face. Being unobtrusive and mundane on the surface is actually what I consider to be the foundation of the design concept. It should be familiar. Unthreatening. Especially with using a non-traditional audience set-up, we'll need to be mindful of putting people at ease. To start with, of course.

"Costume-wise, it's a similar design idea. We're in a contemporary dress situation and we very much want to stay grounded in our world. We're currently envisioning a semi-corporate look," she said, indicating a collage of printed images taped to the model box stand, "put-together and professional, which we'll tailor and adjust to work with the physical demands of the show, it'll definitely be an exploratory, collaborative process throughout rehearsal. But like the set, the ordinariness contains all of the violent details of the story, signs that would be clear, if you knew to look for them. That become clear, as the truth is revealed.

"So," she said, gesturing demonstratively back toward her display, "my aim is to provide space and surface that's very grounded in the actual physical reality being experienced the audience. And that's also a playground for you guys. Oh, and as a side note, the Icarus painting, the actual physical object, is probably a fake. Bruegel did paint it at some point, but the painting we have is likely a copy by someone whose name we'll never know. But I think that that doesn't make it any less real. And, well, there we have it."

"There we have it," echoed Cobb with a smile, more hungry than happy, which made Arthur wary. Not that happy smiles had been particularly common over the past two years, but neither had the hungry ones. 

"So, Yusuf," Cobb continued after the group had shifted back to their places around the table. "Sound?"

"Yes," he acknowledged with a nod. "I will be in most of your rehearsals, as there will be music and sound created live during performance. You will have myself, as well as a terribly skilled cellist and drummer. That is the most, shall we say, visible aspect of the sound. But more crucially, there is the sonic structure of the room itself. Given that our performer will be among the audience, there is the issue of giving support without the amplification being notable to people who will potentially be at a wide range of proximity and direction from the source."

"Promise that I'll speak up," Eames quipped. "Project, even."

"Oh, I have full confidence in you, Mr. Eames," Yusuf replied, completely unruffled and with just enough good humor to be able to plausibly deny condescension. Arthur liked him. "But again, as was discussed with our scenic and costume concepts, we will create what is accepted as a naturalistic environment. This allows us to subtly take control of people's perceptions and begin bending that reality before they necessarily register the change."

Yusuf looked back to Cobb, nodding his completion.

"And: lights," said Cobb.

"There will be lights," said Miles.

"Fantastic," said Eames.

"Mr. Saito?"

Saito shook his head with a small smile that Arthur decided he should probably be more wary of than Dom's crazy smile.

"Let's take a five, and then do the read," Arthur said and started the stopwatch on his phone. "Back at one thirty-eight."

Morgan was already up doing refills on water and coffee without prompting because Arthur hired quality people, which gave him a semi-private opportunity to stare at the cover page of the script. This script. This script was reading drafts together in the Cobbs' living room, just the three of them and a couple bottles of wine. This script was Cobb, voice flat and disconnected, telling him that he'd found the completed document. This script was too many bridges burned, both professional and personal, because of Cobb's heretofore utter inability to keep himself together when dealing with this.

He glanced back as his phone and mentally kicked himself as he saw the stopwatch zoom past five minutes and twenty-six seconds.

"All right, we're back," he called, tapping the reset button.

And across the table, also still seated, was Eames, watching him. Arthur acknowledged his gaze with a polite smile, mostly so that he could then dismiss him.

"Stage directions?" he asked Cobb as he was the last to drop back into his chair. Cobb nodded. "Okay. So here we go. _g equals nine-point-eight-one per second-squared_ by Mal Guillory."

He started his stopwatch.

'The run time of our first read-through was 1:28:45' he typed into the report after rehearsal, when the rest of the room had cleared out and it was just him and Morgan, who was breaking down the chairs and tables that they wouldn't need tomorrow. Arthur had thought that he'd gotten himself into a pretty admirably objective headspace, but even so, it had been an intense read. And this was just sitting at a table. The energy coiled within Eames had been palpable, though, and Arthur couldn't wait to see him on his feet with this.

Completely objectively and professionally speaking, of course.

The designers and Saito had left following the read-through, so it had just been him, Cobb, Eames, and Morgan for the last couple hours, director and actor starting to go through the script with a fine-toothed comb. Finishing table work would probably take all of tomorrow and part of the day after. Arthur saved the barebones schedule as a PDF and e-mailed it out, then saved and closed the rehearsal report.

"Report is done when you have a chance to look it over," he said to Morgan, as he flipped to the back of his production book.

"Sure thing," Morgan said from a lot closer than he expected.

Arthur looked up from Eames' emergency medical info sheet, which he was totally reading for professional reasons, like knowing where Eames lived (Inwood) and his relationship with his emergency contact (cousin). Morgan was sitting next to him with a suspiciously satisfied look on her face.

"What," said Arthur. "What enemies have been slain."

"No slain enemies. Yet. Just… pleasant surprise. With Eames. I'd been talking with some friends and heard he was tough to work with," she said while she opened the report from the dropbox. "Not in the trouble-making sort of way, but just kind of... cold. I mean, we haven't really started, but he seemed plenty friendly so far, though."

"We'll see," said Arthur, rolling down his sleeves and packing up his laptop.

That night, Arthur went to bed and found himself thinking about that night back in June. It was, he realized, the first time he'd really remembered it, recalled the details and relived the experience rather than just contemplated the fact that it had happened, strategized around the objective reality of it. Arthur rarely dwelt in the past for the sake of anyone, let alone the occasional, if not rare, random hook-up, no matter the extent of the immediate gratification that had been provided.

Maybe it was because he still couldn't tell whether or not Eames remembered him. If he only knew, one way or the other, he could then proceed to dismiss it as professionally irrelevant. So the man had a pretty face, a rock solid body, and some talent, theatrical and otherwise. Arthur kept personal and professional strictly separate, and quite honestly, he enjoyed his job more than he enjoyed sex (or at least received more net enjoyment from his job than from sex, once the complications from each had been appropriately subtracted), didn't have time for dating, and hadn't been interested in getting married before it was legal and still wasn't interested now. He wished that he could just be done with it.

But for the other man to potentially have a one-up on him, to have control of their dynamic like that, was vexing. He shifted uncomfortably in bed, his body reacting to the low simmer of frustration and vague humiliation in its usual even more frustrating and humiliating manner. With a noise of disgust, he pre-emptively grabbed a tissue from the nightstand for what was not his first, and would certainly not be his last, angry jerk-off session.

Which wasn't to say that he was going to make things deliberately unpleasant for himself. He firmly believed that he suffered enough in life already for that. If Eames was going to get him into this, he could get him out of this, too.

Everything had been hot, no amount of climate control able to overcome the heat generated by so many bodies forcing themselves into so little space. Arthur never did anything with his hair when he went out like that for that reason – it would just melt and drip in his eyes and that wasn't sexy for anyone. He'd elbowed off enough guys who'd thought that clinging like an octopus while grinding in rhythm counted as dancing that by now, he'd carved out the perfect amount of space for himself – unable to move without brushing up against another body but still unconstricted within that anonymous, ever-shifting press of skin and sweat. That would be almost enough to get him off, if he was in the mood, or at least get him worked up enough that it wouldn't take much more- 

(His hand tightened and twisted as his memory skipped ahead.)

-more, in a dark hallway, without even the flashes of colored lights from the dance floor, though the vibrations of the bass bleed through the wall that presses against Arthur's back, cool in contrast to the other body presses against his front, pressing more and more and more. One of the other man's arms is braced against the wall next to Arthur's head, practical rather than possessive, giving structure to the delightful mess between them, where their hands are jostling each other and their mouths are meeting with sloppy indulgence, with the drunken lack of imagination that cannot conceive of any better place to possibly be. But it's all wet-

(The tissue was lost somewhere in the sheets as his other hand slipped up his chest, restlessly splayed across his own throat.)

-wet like the tongue dragging itself up the tendon of his neck, shared laughs echoing off each other in resonant frequencies, vibrations against sensitive skin, but there's nothing sensitive about the sudden push, the force that briefly lifts him off his feet despite them being of a height, as hands are abandoned for a direct thrust, still clothed saved for open zippers, and his pulse is pounding with the bassline and his body is tense but the good tense, the tension of anticipation with the sweet confidence of fulfillment like now, as one foot dug into the bed and his hand sped up until his breath caught in his throat and he came.

This was so not workplace sexual harassment, Arthur reassured himself as he cleaned himself up and tossed the tissue into the nearby waste basket. He had no doubts about his ability to remain professional – he'd done so through things far more life-shaking than this, after all. 'Are you so sure about that,' an inner voice that sounded disturbingly like Mal teased him, replaying flashes of lips, hands, and hips across his brain as he began dropping off.

The last image that drifted across Arthur's thoughts before he slipped into sleep, however, was from today, that moment when Arthur was twenty-six seconds late, and Eames's blue-gray eyes had met his, and he had felt more exposed than any time he could remember.


	3. Table Work

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's still alive! Only... not really. Real life got in the way, and then also the dawning re-realization of why I never write AUs -- they tend to take on a life of their own in my mind and not want to be fanfics anymore. But I had nearly 3000 words of this chapter written, so I figured that I might as well get it to something like a stopping point and post at least that much.
> 
> What will most likely happen is that I'll leave this fic up for a while, then lock it, and then remove it. Thank you to everyone who has read and enjoyed!

Getting up from his knees with a soft grunt -- that Arthur was not as young as he used to be was a redundant and obvious fact but nevertheless sometimes a truth of deeper resonance, even at what he logically recognized should be a relatively youthful twenty-nine -- he dusted off his slacks and surveyed his handiwork. Not the most complex job he'd ever done, but it looked damned good, if he did say so himself. Ariadne's ground plan for the set was marked out full-scale in a tastefully colorful array of spike tape. He and Morgan had laid down the outlines of the relevant structural elements of the theater itself over the past days following rehearsal, but because Saito apparently had more money than God, they had the rehearsal space reserved exclusively for their use for the entire process and, as such, were actually getting some large pieces of rehearsal scenery. Cobb and Eames had finished their table work in three days following the first rehearsal (unpublished Rehearsal Report #4 General Note: "Morgan find another word for "explore" thesaurus.com is all out"), there was one day of that weird Jungian physical work and some other actor-y shit (which Arthur totally respected but also would never not consider to be weird actor-y shit), and the scenic pieces had been delivered after rehearsal was finished today (a blessing of doing straight-six rehearsal days).

For now, it was just the tables and a shit-ton of chairs, but that was no small thing. Not only were the tables large, but if they were meant to essentially function as platforms, then a bunch of six-foot folding tables wouldn't do if they didn't want anything (or anyone) getting broken. The same went for the chairs, which were standard in size but large in number. What they wouldn't have were all of the cameras and monitors, many of which were on the tables themselves, so Arthur had taped out all of those positions today in bright primary colors. But it was the smooth circles and arcs in muted tones, noting important overhead structures and video pathways, that Arthur was most proud of. It was such a complete fucking nerd thing, but Arthur didn't give a shit. It took a special hand to curve something that was meant to be a straight line, to turn chord to circumference by touch, with no numbers to guide the connection between the measured dots.

"Do you ever go home?"

Arthur turned and saw Eames leaning in the doorway. Eames held up his phone, a bulky Droid that Arthur hadn't stopped judging him for.

"Got your text," Eames said. "Appreciate it. Was passing back this way, so I figured I'd just drop by and see if the room was still open. Didn't fully expect to find you still here."

"You should've checked first, I don't make it a habit," said Arthur, grabbing Eames' charger from his table. When he turned back to him, however, Eames had dropped his bag and was surveying the room, arms crossed. "As you can tell, we got some things."

"So I see." Eames began wandering between the tables, his leisurely gait contrasting with the sharpness of his gaze as he examined the new pieces.

"We'll begin working with them tomorrow," Arthur continued, putting on his jacket.

"Arthur, are you kicking me out?"

"Here's your charger." He held it out helpfully.

Eames gave a short chuckle, then ambled back over to him and took his charger, and Arthur was pretty sure that that glancing contact was the first time they'd touched each other in the past week.

"Got a hot date?"

"Gotta water my houseplants."

"Right, right, I can respect that." Eames scrunched up his face as he scooped up his bag and gave the room one last backwards glance. "You did all that? Where's Morgan? Has _she_ got a hot date?"

"The shop loaded it in, I just did the final taping. I sent her home, it's one of those things I like doing alone," Arthur stated as they walked out of the room side by side. "And what's with your obsession with my team having hot dates? Am I going to have to tell you to stop harassing my assistant?"

"I'm not hara- well, she could tell you better than I could whether or not I'm harassing her, but I am reasonably certain that I am not and I do hope that one or the other of you will tell me if I'm wrong. Honestly, it's just a bit of ribbing, I'm, like, ninety percent sure that she's a lesbian."

The traitorous snort of laughter escaped before Arthur could smother it, and Eames latched onto it as an invitation to keep talking. "I mean, just tell me I'm wrong. Now, you know who's been giving her the eyes, right? Our little wunderkind set designer?"

"Ariadne?"

"Mark my words. Lovely young woman as well, that one. Have you worked with her before?"

He shook his head. "She's straight outta school. Cobb is pretty much the only person all of us have in common."

"Mm, I've done a show with Yusuf before. Well, he was mixing, it was more of a performance-y, music-y type affair, over at BAM, in the Fisher. Less theatre-y than this, even, on the weird side of things."

"Do you do anything _not_ weird?"

"Do _you_?"

"I know what _I_ do, I was asking you."

"One can only do so many productions of Streetcar before one loses one's mind," Eames answered lightly as they reached the street. He glanced both ways, then looked to Arthur with a raised eyebrow.

"Broadway-Lafayette," Arthur said, turning right. "See you tom-"

"This script, though, it's pretty incredible," Eames continued, walking alongside him. "I dug around a bit, of course, but I couldn't find any workshops of it or anything. Is this really its first time out?"

"…yeah. Yeah, well, it's pretty clearly something that wouldn't be well represented by somebody reading at a music stand."

"Still, it's pretty ballsy to throw all in like this, without any past development backing you up. Don't see so much of that these days. Even if Saito has more money than God, that's a lot of pressure."

"You've worked with Cobb," Arthur replied, that being sufficient explanation for anyone for whom that statement was true.

"Indeed. As have you. I have to ask, were you part of the little group behind this?"

"Excuse me?"

"This show."

"Not really sure what you're asking."

"In the playwright's dedication at the beginning. Is that one set of initials yours?"

Arthur's pace picked up a little. "Could be. They do match."

"Yes, yes, they do."

To Eames's credit, he let it drop but also didn't offer some bullshit apology for prying. Arthur had fielded enough digging for gossip under the guise of sympathy over the past couple years that he appreciated some tastefully-restrained straightforwardness. They continued walking down Lafayette Street together in silence, until they reached the Bleecker Street subway entrance.

Arthur began veering off to the side, giving Eames a nod. "I'm gonna head down here, so-"

"You've got a little…" Eames reached behind Arthur, below the bottom of his jacket. As Arthur reflexively twisted around – to move away, to see what he was doing, something – Eames pressed a thumb to his forehead. "There you go.  See you tomorrow morning."

Arthur peeled the short strip of red spike tape from his face, which briefly scrunched into an unappreciated expression of indignation to Eames's back as the other man disappeared into the Friday rush hour crowd, before Arthur likewise turned away to go down the stairs and stop blocking the subway entrance like an asshole.

There were a few possibilities, Arthur considered, as he rode the M into Brooklyn, staring at the flashes of bright color in the MTA safety infographics on the wall, mostly obscured behind the passengers crowded in front of him. Eames might have been just pumping him for information about the whole messy business with Mal. He wouldn't have been the first, and Eames arguably had an actual stake in knowing what was brewing under the surface of this project. Or Eames might have been trying to needle him, leveraging Arthur's uncertainty against himself, feeling out where Arthur stood regarding the strange energy between them, a magnetic repulsion that threatened only needing one to turn to send them crashing back into each other. Or, Sondheim forbid, Eames might have been trying to be friendly and engage with him on a personal level as a fellow human being.

Realistically, Arthur knew it was probably some combination of all three, which was a pain in the ass.

Arthur had always been good at compartmentalization, even as a kid. (School things for school, family things for family, Arthur things for Arthur.) Working in this business made this skill both more invaluable and more complicated. On the one hand, it was nearly impossible to actually separate things into neat little boxes, what with the long, strange hours spent working together, often with a good deal of emotional and/or physical intimacy, tending to lead to rather incestuous professional and social circles, interpersonal appropriateness colored in shades of gray, and a skewed sense of what constituted sexual harassment in the real world. On the flip side of the coin, if you wanted to preserve any sense of self whatsoever, you needed to be able to leave things on their respective sides of the theater door. It wasn't anything he couldn't handle. For all of his specific profession's reputation for being rigid sticks-in-the-mud, Arthur wouldn't have his own personal reputation for being as good as he was if he weren't adaptable.

Then again, sometimes Arthur felt like his job was, at base, a commitment to going quietly insane.

But even if it was, and even if he did keep voluntarily putting himself in the same room as Cobb, he did draw his lines. He spent off-hours time with creative and technical team members, but not performers. He caught some drinks, but didn't share gossip. And he got on with his colleagues with professional amicability, but he didn't go beyond that. The general principle of the metaphorical separation of church and state had been one he'd held in an abstract sort of way from the start, and with much more concrete conviction ever since Mal. Because the last thing Arthur needed on his plate was one more complication, to say nothing of a self-inflicted one.

The train jolted around a curve, creating a small wave in the sea of bodies and parting a gap in front of the wall Arthur was facing. 'Drop Something? Leave it!' the revealed safety sign advised.

Arthur did not believe in signs. Arthur did not believe in a higher power. Arthur did not believe that everything happened for a reason. Arthur did, however, believe in considered responses to external stimuli. And so, he dropped the subject.

The subject of Eames's designs very cordially remained dropped, with none of Eames's banter pushing into the realm of the personal, despite Arthur's keeping a closer than usual sentinel on their boundaries. Perhaps he had decided that he had pushed too far – decided that he didn't want to push any further.

Arthur recognized his conflicted feelings about that as hypocritical bruised pride, and thus, below being acted upon.

On Wednesday morning, Arthur was on his back underneath one of the tables when Eames's face appeared above him.

"Good morning," said Eames's face.

"You're in early," said Arthur. "Have a gold star."

"I'll keep it as a treasure."

"Early is good, I was being sincere," Arthur protested as he folded up his Leatherman.

"As was I. What the hell are you doing down there?"

Arthur crawled out and straightened out his clothes, heading back to his table while Eames hit up hospitality. "All of the jumping you and Cobb have been doing on this table, it's started wobbling like a drunken sailor. And it's not in the interests of the production for you to go ass over tea kettle, despite you and Cobb trying to turn this into Fuerza Bruta."

"We're _exploring_."

"You two, combined, are a menace," said Arthur.

"More than you two combined?" Eames wondered aloud with the lightness of polite accusation as he idly tore an empty sugar packet to shreds

"I'm the one-man harm-reduction team in this outfit, don't go implying that I'm complicit."

"Oh, but you are. Even if he's the only one you'll play along with, or maybe because of that, actually. It would be almost cute, if it weren't so twisted. Or maybe that's what makes it cute. Almost."

"Hey, Cobb, we're almost cute," Arthur said as speak-of-the-devil walked in, Ariadne keeping pace beside him.

"'Almost' doesn't cut it," Cobb said because he clearly wasn't really paying attention to anything other than the daily schedule and scene chart that Morgan had just handed him. Oblivious to Eames's snickering, Cobb squinted at the papers in a way that didn't mean anything good.

"What," said Arthur.

"We need to change what we're doing today," said Cobb.

"To what and for what?"

"Since we're losing tomorrow, I really want to get a pass at section four. We haven't touched it since table work."

Arthur tapped his fist on the table as he flipped his production binder open to his calendar. "We had decided to hold off on section four until after Thanksgiving because Yusuf and Robert don't join us until then and we're limited in what we can do without them."

"I need to see that section on its feet so I can work on it tomorrow."

"I just want to be sure that the schedule is what you actually want and not just Thanksgiving making you nervous."

"Thanksgiving doesn't-"

"-Thanksgiving always makes you nervous. We got time on this one, we don't gotta rush. You know that I'd be pushing if we did. We haven't even finished three, which had been the plan for today."

"And kind of what I'd been coming in to watch," Ariadne chimed in.

"It's your choice, Dom," Arthur cut back in, shooting Ariadne a warning look as he penciled in a theoretical Friday onto the print-out of today's schedule, "but we're on track with the schedule for Robert joining rehearsal on Saturday. If we skip that transition today, we'll have to circle back on Friday. Ariadne, would you be available to drop by again then?"

"Yeah," she said, then added distractedly, "it's not like I'm not going anywhere."

Making a mental note to check in with her about that later, Arthur shoved the paper across the table in front of Dom. "So if that works better for you, and you're okay with jumping ahead today without knowing exactly how we get there, then we'll still be ready for Saturday. But again, we're not racing the clock. Yet."

"I think mommy and daddy are fighting," Arthur heard Eames mock-whisper to Ariadne.

"You'll know when mommy and daddy are fighting," Arthur deadpanned, not breaking eye contact with Dom's face as he squinted down at the schedule.

"I want to jump ahead today," Dom said finally.

Arthur shot Morgan a look to re-set the rehearsal room to what they could only guess the top of section four set-up would be because they'd never, you know, _finished section three_.

"Well," he said to Ariadne as Eames began to interrogate Cobb about what exactly this meant acting-wise or whatever," you'll be getting a special sneak peek today, if you still wanna stick around."

"I think I just got a special sneak peek at something," she said. "And sure, I'm here, can't hurt."

"Not traveling for Thanksgiving?" he asked casually as he flipped ahead in his script.

"Nah, I was just gonna stay in, I guess."

"In that case, consider yourself invited to my non-Thanksgiving. It's mostly just me and the houseplants this year, the usual suspects have all betrayed me and 'gotten married' or something, but I'm looking to keep the tradition going. Morgan's gonna drop by for drinks around one before she takes off for better pastures. No pressure, just lemme know."

"...really?"

When he looked up, the designer was wearing a little smile that made her look so young.

He smiled back. "Hope you like the Fast and the Furious movies, though, because that's a non-negotiable part of the evening." He glanced at his watch. "We're almost here. There's some space for you at the end of the table, feel free to plug into that power strip if you need to."

"I'm good, thanks," she said, settling in with her notebook.

Arthur glanced over at Dom and Eames. Their conversation seemed to be winding down, with Dom looking satisfied and Eames... not so much, but not combative, at least.

"Hey, guys," he called, "Ten o'clock, you ready to get started?"

"Sure, fine, whatever," said Eames with the flimsy politeness of mental self-preservation. Arthur caught his eye and raised an eyebrow in question. Eames just shrugged, so Arthur leaned a little more skepticism into the eyebrow, which seemed to work, as the actor shook his head but also cracked a smile.

With neither preamble nor, it seemed, awareness of his minions conspiring under his nose, Dom launched into a discourse about Eastern European geopolitics that meant that they apparently were ready to get started. Arthur sat down at his table and opened his notebook.

A post-it pad poked at his hand a couple minutes later. He glanced down to see a note from Morgan: "what are you smiling about?"

"Dom being Dom" he scribbled back without looking and only partially lying, leaving the note there for a few moments before inconspicuously removing the top post-it, folding it, and depositing it into the depths of his backpack, to be cleared out later at home.

_From Rehearsal Report #8 General Notes:_

_As a reminder, there will be no rehearsal tomorrow due to the Thanksgiving holiday. Safe journeys to anyone traveling, and see you back in the room on Friday._


End file.
